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Rise of the Roman Republic
The period of the '''Rise of the Roman Republic' lasted from about 280 BC until 134 BC. It began with the final step in their conquest of the Italian peninsula; the Pyrrhic War. It then ended in the wake of the Punic Wars and wars in Greece that resulted in an empire stretching from Sicily to Spain, from north Africa to Greece. In the early 3rd-century BC, the Roman Republic was one among many powers in the Mediterranean, but after a series of wars over a span of 150 years, the Roman empire as we think of it was beginning to form into its recognisable shape. The first was prompted when the Greeks of southern Italy asked the assistance of a great military leader of mainland Greece, Pyrrhus of Epirus, who campaigned against the Romans, but achieved only the costly and crippling victories to whose type he gave his name. Within a few years Rome and Carthage were caught up in a duel of more than a century, in which the whole western Mediterranean was at stake; the Punic Wars. There were three bursts of fighting. In the first, the Romans began naval warfare on a large scale for the first time and took Sicily, which became the first Roman province, a momentous step. The Second Punic War, the greatest of the three, was fought in a greatly extended theatre, for when it began the Carthaginians were established in Spain. It is famous for Hannibal’s great march to Italy with an army including elephants, and for his crushing victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae. At this point, Rome was badly shaken, but she hung on and then boldly struck at Carthage in her own possessions in Spain. When an attempt by Hannibal’s younger brother to reinforce him was beaten off in 207 BC, the Romans transferred their offensives to north Africa itself. There, at last, Hannibal had to follow them to meet his defeat at Zama in 202 BC. This battle settled more than a war; it delivered the immeasurably valuable prize of uncontested mastery of the western Mediterranean, as well as another rich province in Spain. Eventually Rome's fear and envy of Carthage got the better of them, and the city was razed to the ground in 146 BC, with a new Roman province created in its stead. In the midst of this epic struggle, the Romans began to dabble in Greek politics, for Macedon had allied itself with Carthage. The twists and turns are complicated, but a series of wars with Macedon and Seleucid Persia ended with Greece becoming yet another Roman province in 146 BC. Thus was the empire made by the republic. Like all empires, but perhaps more obviously than any earlier one, its appearance owed as much to chance as to design. Yet Roman success would prove to be the undoing of the Roman Republic, prompting the internal crises that would result in its transformation into the Roman Empire. History Mediterranean Powers in 280 BC Prior to 280 BC, the eastern and western Mediterranean had developed for the most part independently of one another. Greek attention always faced east, consumed by their rivalry with Persia. Alexander the Great marched his army 3,000 miles east through Persia and beyond, rather than the 650 miles west to Rome. There were of course Greek colonies in the west, but once the cities were founded, they had little involvement with the motherland, and vice versa; the only major exception was the Athenian Sicilian Expedition (315 BC). It was only in 280 BC, when the post-Alexandrian Hellenic world had settled itself, that an ambitious Greek general like Pyrrhus could look west for opportunities of conquest. The western Greeks obviously knew of Rome, but they were long preoccupied with the first great threat they faced, Carthage in modern day Tunisia. We know very little of Carthage's own history, since the native documentation was to perish when the city was razed to the ground in 146 BC. Founded by Phoenicians sometime around 800 BC, it rapidly assumed a leading position among its neighbouring colonies. As the centre of a trade-based empire, stretching from southern Spain to Lebanon, it grew to surpass in wealth and power even the original Phoenician cities such as Tyre and Sidon. Carthaginian coins have been found as far away as the Azores and Britain. Politically its government was an oligarchy made up of the richest families in the city. It seems to have had fewer social problems than Rome; wealth meant everything in Carthage, it didn't matter if it was made centuries ago or last week. Another marked contrast with the Roman Republic, was that military services was the most important contribution any Roman citizen could make, while the Carthaginians preferred trade and agriculture to fighting. Her empire was based on alliances rather than conquests, and she had no army to speak of other than a small professional officer corp. Instead they relied on mercenaries, especially Numidians (modern day northern Algeria), paid for out of the great Carthaginian treasury. She did however have one of the finest navies in the Mediterranean, which provided most Carthaginian commoners with a stable income and career. Carthage was a formidable commercial competitor of Syracuse, the greatest of the western Greek city-states. During almost all the 4th-century BC, Syracuse was at war with Carthage, but from 300 BC it was clear that Carthaginian power was growing while Syracuse had also to face a Roman threat in mainland Italy. There were thus three major actors in the arena of the western Mediterranean, but the Greek east seemed strangely uninterested, at least until the outbreak of the Punic Wars. A "cloud in the west" was one description of the struggle between Carthage and Rome viewed from the east; whatever its outcome, it was bound to have great repercussions for the whole Mediterranean. Pyrrhic War After the five decade long struggle with the Samnites and others, all that now stood between the Roman Republic and an Italian wide empire were the fiercely independent but disunited Greek cities of Magna Graecia in the far south. The Romans decided that all they had to do was play the cities off one another. But their plans were complicated by the introduction of an army from across the Adriatic, led by the mainland Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus (d. 272 BC); the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC). In 282 BC, Tarentum, one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia, sent envoys to mainland Greece begging for help against Roman encroachment. The major Greek powers disdained to get involved, but Pyrrhus, an ambitious military-adventurer and renowned veteran of the dynastic wars that follow the death of Alexander the Great, saw an opportunity of an Italian kingdom for himself. Pyrrhus sailed in 281 BC with an army of some 25,000 highly trained soldiers and 20 war-elephants, the first to be seen in Italy. The Romans first met this army at the Battle of Heraclea (July 280 BC) and again at Asculum (279 BC), where the disciplined Greek phalanx proved more than a match for the Romans. The legions were nevertheless stubborn in defeat, withdrawing in an orderly fashion, while the victories took their tole on the Greek army, with Pyrrhus famously commenting, "One more such victory and we are undone". ''This has given rise to the modern term ''Pyrrhic Victory to describe a success with no profit. Afterwards, Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy for a few years to aid Syracuse in a campaign against the Carthaginians. He had considerable success in Sicily but was unable to completely dislodge the Carthaginians and eventually fell-out with his Sicilian Greek allies. Returning to Italy, he inflicted another defeat on the Romans at the Battle of Beneventum (275 BC), this time with particularly heavy losses. Afterwards, at his wits end, Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy altogether. Following the war, Rome asserted her hegemony over Magna Graecia in short order, with Tarentum, the city that had sparked the war, falling in 272 BC. The Pyrrhic War was important for many reasons. Rome had shown herself capable of pitting her armies against the Greeks, the paramount military powers in the region, and proven herself a power in pan-Mediterranean politics. It was also the first time the legions had faced war-elephants, and they would learn from their defeats, crafting new tactics to deal with the hitherto unknown elephant; tactics that would come into play when Hannibal deployed them time and again sixty years later. First Punic War When Pyrrhus was driven from Italy and the Roman Republic finally held the entire peninsula, it seemed almost inevitable that the Romans would come into conflict with the other great power of the western Mediterranean, Carthage. The term Punic comes from the Latin word Punicus, ''referring to the Carthaginians' Phoenician ancestry. Carthage had colonies right on Rome’s doorstep in Sicily, an exceptionally fertile island too rich not to be coveted by both; it would later be known as "''the bread basket of Rome”. Sicily had been disputed for decades between the Carthaginian settlements on the west of the island, and the Greek city-states in the east, predominantly Syracuse. The spark for the epic century long struggle between the Rome and Carthage was the situation in the small Greek colony of Messina. In 288 BC, a group of Italian mercenaries known as the Mamertines, who had been hired by Syracuse to fight the Carthaginians, occupied Messina when they were left aggrieved after a peace was reached. They used the city as a based to plunder the countryside of northeastern Sicily. In 264 BC, the Mamertines appealed to Rome for aid, seemingly uncertain about whether they felt more threatened by the Carthaginians, or by Syracuse now under the ambitious tyrant Hiero II (d. 215 BC). Ironically, a few years earlier the Romans had dealt with a remarkably similar bunch of mercenaries on the Italian mainland by hanging them rather than helping them. The First Punic War (264-241 BC) quickly descended into a straight clash between Rome and Carthage, when the pragmatic Hiero agreed to an alliance with Rome that secured the independence of Syracuse. The Roman legions quickly proved themselves dominant on land, advancing steadily through Sicily during 262-1 BC. After a harsh defeat at the Battle of Agrigentum (262 BC), the Carthaginians resolved to avoid further direct engagements, turning to guerilla tactics. However, the Romans could never hope to drive the Carthaginians completely from the island, with their fleet of warships able to recover coastal regions with ease or even raid the Italian coast. To defeat this new enemy, Rome would need to become a naval power, despite having virtually no ships of their own. So, with typical Roman confidence, engineers set about building a fleet, supposedly based on the design of a captured Carthaginian warship that had run aground on the mainland. In just two months they had over 100 ships. As inexperienced seamen, the Romans pinned their hopes on an innovation briefly used by the Greek: a hinged drawbridge that would crash down on an enemy ship, holding it fast and allowing the Roman troops to storm aboard. Despite some early calamities, Rome shocked Carthage by winning her first major naval engagement at the Battle of Mylae (260 BC). Victory at Mylae was nevertheless followed by years of inconclusive fighting, on and around Sicily. So in 256 BC, the Senate launched a much bolder strategy; a strike at Carthage itself. A massive fleet of 250 warships and 80 troop-transports set sail for north Africa, defeating a Carthaginian fleet along the way, before successfully landing near Carthage. The Roman invasion was initially so successful that Carthage sued for peace. However, the overeager Romans proposed such preposterous terms, that the Carthaginians were virtually forced to refuse. Instead the north Africans hired a renowned Spartan mercenary general called Xanthippus to reorganise and lead their army. Under Xanthippus’ brilliant leadership, the resurgent Carthaginians delivered an absolutely crushing defeat to the Romans at the Battle of Tunis (255 BC); of the 15,000 man invasion force, just 2,000 would eventually limp home. To add insult to injury, most of the fleet was lost in a storm on the journey home. Thus the conflict returned to the island of Sicily, where it became a long slow war of attrition. By 241 BC, both sides were financially exhausted, short of manpower, and facing problems elsewhere. After 23 years of conflict, the resulting peace treaty seeded Sicily to Rome, and Carthage agreed to pay a large war-indemnity. Thus the Roman Republic had gained her the first rich overseas province, a momentous step. Yet the First Punic War had done nothing to settle the larger issue of who controlled the western Mediterranean. The last commander of Carthaginian forces on Sicily was Hamilcar Barca (d. 228 BC). On abandoning the island, he had his nine year old son swear an oath of eternal hatred for the Roman; it was an oath that Hannibal Barca never forgot. Second Punic War During the intervening 20 years until the next outbreak of hostilities, the Romans did not sit idle. They defeated the Gauls occupying the Po valley, extending Roman hegemony over Italy to the Alps. They also dealt with the pirates in the Adriatic Sea from Illyria to the north-west of Greece (modern-day Albania), in the process establishing a tiny toehold on mainland Greece. Meanwhile, in the peace-treaty with Carthage, both powers had agreed not to interfere in the others territory. But it soon became plainly evident that Rome had little intention of keeping its side of the bargain. Using the dubious pretext of a revolt that the Romans had in fact encouraged, they annexed the Carthaginian islands of Corsica and Sardinia, plunging relations between the powers to a new low point. The Romans nevertheless looked on with alarm as the Carthaginians began conquering half of Spain, a rich prize for any empire-builder; it was incredibly rich in gold, silver and copper, and had a plentiful supply of tough Celtic warriors, useful recruits for an army. The foundations of this rich province were laid by Hamilcar Barca (d. 228 BC), who had already shown his great military ability as commander in Sicily during the latter stage of the First Punic War. Hamilcar presented the idea to the Carthaginian Senate as a means to compensate for the loss of Sicily and a means to repay the war-indemnity, but he clearly had his own plans to build-up the wealth and power necessary to revenge himself on the hated Romans. He crossed to Spain in 337 BC, and established a base-of-operation just over the strait from Africa. From there, he steadily carved out a sizable province from the fierce but bitterly divided Spanish tribes. On his death nine years later, he was succeeded as governor by his son Hasdrubal (d. 270 BC), who focused predominantly on consolidating his province, founding a new capital on the south-eastern coast at Cartagena, a virtually impregnable fortress. By this stage, Rome had grown concerned about what the Carthaginians were up to, since they had allies in northern Spain, but they were satisfied with reassurances in 325 BC that the province would not extend north of the Ebro River. Notably this left Saguntum, a city on the east coast with friendly relations with Rome, within the Carthaginian domain. Yet Saguntum was left alone until after Hasdrubal died and was succeeded by his 25 year-old brother, Hannibal Barca '''(d. 183 BC). Hannibal picked up where his father had left off, conquering new territory for Carthage with a surprising efficiency that foreshadowed things to come. Then in 219 BC, he captured Saguntum. No agreement with Rome had been broken, but the crisis escalated so quickly that it's clear both sides now regard the '''Second Punic War (218–201 BC) as inevitable. The Romans immediately set about raising three armies: the main force would be sent to northern Africa to strike at Carthage itself; another would be sent to Spain to teach the young upstart a lesson; and a third was placed in the Po valley to deal with any opportunistic attacks from the Gauls. Hannibal however had other plans. He had at his disposal a formidable army of 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry and 67 war-elephants, all veterans of the campaigns in Spain, and with it he did the unthinkable. Setting out in May 218 BC, he audaciously marched this army from Cartagena through hostile northern Spain and southern Gaul, ferrying the elephants across the Rhone on rafts, and then over the treacherous peaks of the Alps into north Italy. This famous exploit cost him over half of his troops, casualties of the environment or skirmishes with angry local tribes all along the five month journey. On arriving in Italy, Hannibal’s campaigns would earn him the reputation as one of the greatest military strategists in history. He was able to briefly rest his troops, but the legions stationed in northern Italy, ostensibly to ward-off the Gauls, were soon on their way. The war began in earnest at the Battle of the Trebia (December 218 BC), where the Roman cavalry proved woefully inadequate in the face of their far superior counterparts, and Hannibal the far superior general. He bated the Romans into battle with a cavalry raid on their camp, and once the battle-was-joined unleashed a hidden band of cavalry to attack the Roman rear. Trebia was an unmitigated disaster for the Romans; perhaps 10,000 out of 40,000 Romans were able to retreat to safety. After wintering near Bologna, Hannibal moves south, where the Roman army that had been intended for the north African campaign was sent against him. At the Battle of Lake Trasimene (June 217 BC), he lured the Romans into a trap. He first outmaneuvered the Romans to position himself between them and Rome, by marching his army through a swamp for four days; in the swamp Hannibal's eyes succumbed to the infection that would eventually lead to the removal of one of them. The Romans, convinced Hannibal intended to attack Rome, hasty set out in pursuit without proper reconnaissance. The trap was sprung as the Romans were moving along the narrow plain between Lake Trasimene and some steep hills, upon which the Carthaginians were waiting. In less than four hours, 30,000 Romans were killed or drowned in a vain attempt to escape the slaughter; some 10,000 are said to have made their way back to Rome by various means. With each of these victories, large numbers of Gauls flocked with Hannibal's cause, reinforcing his losses. But Hannibal's coup de grace was still to come. In the face of this growing crisis, the Senate appointed a Dictator, Quintus Fabius Maximus (d. 203 BC), to take sole control of the state and military. Fabius had a very different strategy for dealing with Hannibal, a strategy that every proud Rome hated, a strategy that earned him a place in the annals of military history; it would be known forever after as Fabian Tactics. He refused to be goaded into another pitched battle at the time and place Hannibal's choosing, in favour of wearing down the enemy through a war of attrition and choosing his moment to strike. But Hannibal proved too savvy to be drawn into a battle he had not himself carefully orchestrated. The Carthaginian general was almost trapped in Ager Falernus valley in September 217 BC, but made good his escape with another piece of tactical brilliance; under cover of dark, he sent a herd of oxen with touches tied to their horns at one route out, while his army escaped the other way. Thus the upshot of Fabius' strategy was that Hannibal ravaged the Italian countryside, while the Roman legions studiously avoided conflict. This was a strategy that would in the end see Rome prevail the Second Punic War, but that did not save Fabius himself. In an unprecedented measure, the deeply unpopular Fabius was accused of cowardice and ousted from power; making a mockery of the office of Dictator, which fell out of use until revived a century-and-a-half later by Julius Caesar. The return to more aggressive tactics led to one of the most famous military defeats in history; the Battle of Cannae (August 216 BC). The Roman plan was to rely on sheer strength of numbers, with an army over 80,000 strong against about half that number under Hannibal. But the Carthaginian general brilliantly used the Roman's own tactics against them. Traditionally the Romans would smash through the centre with their strongest units, so he instructed his own centre to slowly give ground. This gradually formed a crescent shaped battleline, that turned into an envelopment once the superior Carthaginian cavalry on the wings had routed their opposing units. Completely surrounded and with no means of escape, the Romans were slaughtered. Perhaps 70,000 men died at Cannae including the cream of the Roman leadership; 29 military tribunes, one of the Consuls for the year, and 80 other men of Senatorial rank. Hannibal's near perfect double envelopment at Cannae is often viewed as one of the greatest battlefield manoeuvres in history; Dwight D. Eisenhower described it as a work of art. Yet Cannae proved the high point of Hannibal’s 15-year campaign in Italy. Historians have endlessly speculated about what would have happened if he had immediately marched on the Rome, though his army of 35,000 was rather paltry to take such a city. He did send a delegation to the Senate offering to negotiate a peace, but despite the catastrophe they refused to parley and instead raised new legions. The Carthaginian general had clearly proven himself the master in military tactics, so the Romans returned to Fabius’ attritional strategy; keeping armies in the field to limit Hannibal’s movements, but avoiding open battle. Hannibal for his part moved south and tried to turn the Italian allies against Rome. However, the majority remained loyal, with some notable exceptions: the city of Capua defected to Hannibal in 216 BC, but was eventually successfully besieged and severely punished with much of the population sold into slavery; and the city of Tarentum was almost taken in 212 BC but a stubborn legion held out in the citadel until reinforced. The Carthaginian general thus failed to break Rome’s determination to fight on, and his failure to secure a safe Italian port prevented Carthage from ever properly reinforcing his army. Hannibal became like a bull in the ring, tormented by lesser beings on all sides, while his own strength slowly ebbed away. The extraordinary fact is how long he remained in Italy, almost totally isolated on enemy territory for 12 years after Cannae. With stalemate in Italy, the war was forced to seek other arenas. In 215 BC, Hiero II king of Syracuse and staunch ally of Rome, finally died after 55-years on the throne, and his impressionable grandson and successor defected to the Carthaginians. But the Syracusans' army proved no match for the arriving Roman force, who soon laid siege to the city; a siege renowned for the war machines invented by Greek mathematician Archimedes (d. 212 BC). After almost three-year, Syracuse finally fell to the Romans and, in an uncharacteristic display of barbarism, the city was thoroughly looted and sacked, during which Archimedes was killed. Thus the entire island of Sicily came under direct Roman control. In Greece, King Philip V of Macedon (d. 179 BC) allied himself with Carthage, and threatened to invade Italy as well; the First Macedonian War (214–205 BC). However the Romans managed through shrewd diplomacy to agitate enough Greek cities against Macedon, to keep Philip tied up in Greece for the duration of the war; the Romans would not forget their debt to the Greeks in the Second Macedonian War. It was in Iberia, that the time of the war would turn, thanks to Rome’s own young military rock star, Publius Scipio (d. 183 BC), destined to become the towering figure of Roman history, Scipio Africanus. In 218 BC, a Roman expedition force had been sent to Spain under Scipio’s father and uncle, to bog down the Carthaginians under Hannibal's younger brother Hasdrubal (d. 207 BC). Seven long-years of careful Roman campaigning and alliances with disgruntled Spanish tribes ended in defeat at the Battle of the Upper Baetis (211 BC), where both commanders were killed. Into this leadership vacuum stepped 25-year-old Scipio Africanus, who persuaded the Senate to allow him to take-up the command in Spain. Scipio arrived in Spain in 210 BC with reinforcements that brought the Roman strength to about 31,000. With cunning and imagination, he did the last thing anyone expected. Evaded Hasdrubal’s three field armies, in 209 BC he sacked the lightly-defended capital of Carthaginian Spain, Cartagena. This act of audacity gained the Romans supplies, a great deal of plunder, and more importantly new allies among the subjugated Spanish tribes. Over the next three years, he defeated the Carthaginians twice at the Battle of Baecula (208 BC) and a decisive victory at the Battle of Ilipa (206 BC). By this time Hasdrubal himself had already departed Spain, to make another arduous journey across Gaul into Italy, in an attempt to reinforce Hannibal's army. He moved confidently through northern Italy, knowing that the Roman armies were in the south hemming in his brother. But the Romans force-marched an army 250 miles north in 7 days, and destroyed Hasdrubal's army at the Battle of the Metaurus (June 207 BC). Hasdrubal died fighting and Hannibal's last best hope to conquer the Romans died with him. Scipio Africanus returned to Italy in 205 BC, and persuaded the Senate that the way to drive-off Hannibal was to launch another invasion of north Africa. He landed the next year with some 35,000 men, and eventually took the Carthaginian city of Utica after a protracted siege. At the same time he began peeling-off Carthaginian allies, most notably the Numidians (modern day northern Algeria), a client state who had long chaffed under Carthaginian rule and famed for their formidable cavalry. After two defeats in battle to the Romans, the Carthaginian Senate was left with no choice, Hannibal had to be recalled from Italy. The bitterly disappointed general returned to defend his native city, but despaired of the situation; he had his core of veterans from the Italian campaign but the rest of the Carthaginian army were raw recruits. The two greatest generals of their day finally came face-to-face upon the soil of Africa at the Battle of Zama (October 202 BC). Scipio was a great admirer of Hannibal and had studied his tactics carefully. He neutralised Hannibal’s initial elephant charge by having some thin ranks in his infantry-line, that dissolved to leave gaps and the elephant ran through them; the elephants seem to have been half-trained for some of them veered into the Carthaginian cavalry on the left flank. The battle between the two tactical geniuses turned into turned into a clash of brute force. When the Numidian cavalry prevailed and returned to attack the Carthaginian rear, Hannibal's army was broken and he had to withdraw in defeat. Carthage offered no further resistance and accepted punishing peace terms: Spain was ceded to the Romans as the province of Hispania; more war reparations were to be paid over the next 50 years; large tracks of land were given over to Rome's Numidian allies; and Carthage had to submit to Rome in all matters of war and foreign policy. The Romans had paid a high price for their victory; the physical damage to southern Italy was enormous, the treasury was all but empty, and the population of Rome itself had been reduced by about 17%. But they had won an immeasurably valuable prize; uncontested mastery of the entire western Mediterranean. One of the furthest reaching land empires in history was born on that day at Zama in 202 BC. Rome in Greece After the exhausting and massively destructive Second Punic War, getting embroiled in the cut-throat world of Greek power-politics really should have been the last thing on Roman minds. The eastern Mediterranean was still very much living in a post-Alexandrian world, with the dominant kingdoms jockeying for position ruled by descendants of Alexander’s generals: Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Syria and Persia; Pergamon in western Anatolia; and Macedon reemeging to a position of power under Philip V after years tied up in dynastic struggles. During the Second Punic War, alliances with semi-independent Greek city-states had played an invaluable role in keeping Macedon out of the war. With Macedon once again in expansionist mood in Greece, envoys were sent to the Roman for aid and with some reluctance they decided to intervene. Roman efforts at diplomacy were scoffed at, and the situation quickly descended into the Second Macedonian War (200–197 BC). The waning of Greece and the waxing of Rome was confirmed once and for all at the Battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC), where the Roman legions decimated the Macedon. The Roman Maniple system proved superior to the Greek Phalanx, which was only effective on the right terrain and only if given enough time to form properly. Macedon was forced to give up her recent conquests, and dramatically announcing that all of Greece was now free of foreign interference. Curiously Rome was not among the foreign powers Greece was free from, and soon enough chaffed under their Roman "protectors". Meanwhile with Macedon weakened, soon enough the Seleucid Persian Empire began making increasingly aggressive manoeuvres towards Greece, leading to the Roman–Seleucid War (192–188 BC). The situation was made worse by the presence of an enemy that the Romans thought they had seen the last of; Hannibal had fled into exile and was now a military advisor to Seleucid king, Antiochus III (d. 187 BC). A massive Roman force was soon mustered, and set-out for Greece under the great hero of the Second Punic War, Scipio Africanus. Facing an army almost twice as large, the Seleucids tried to turn Roman strength against them by positioning their army in the most famous bottleneck in history, Thermopylae, the site of the last stand of the 300 Spartans. The Second Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC) had none of the luster of the original; Roman victory was quick and decisive. Antiochus fled back to Anatolia with the Romans fast on his heels. The decisive engagement was fought at the Battle of Magnesia (190 BC), near the border between Pergamon and Syria. This time the Seleucids outnumbered the Romans, but the result was the same; a crushing Roman victory. This defeat marked the decline of the Seleucid Empire, as they began to face an increasingly neighbour to the east, Parthia. In the decades after the war, most of the fiercely independent Greeks bristled against Roman hegemony however hands-off; Pergamon was one of the few reliable Greek allies. Time and again Rome was forced to intervene: Macedon revolted in 171 BC; Epirus was brutally sacked in 167 BC to make an example; Macedon revolted again in 150 BC; and Corinth revolted and was destroyed in 146 BC. After nearly a half-century of constant crisis management in Greece, with Roman patience was at an end, Macedon was formally annexed as a province. The rest of the Greek city-states gradually lost all autonomy as well. Greece would languishes under Roman rule. The Roman example may have brought order and regular government to the more primitive provinces of the empire, but Greek culture lost most of its vitality under the Romans. End of Carthage Around the same time, there occurred the last act of Rome’s great struggle with Carthage; the Third Punic War (149–146 BC). Carthage was a shadow of her former self, having given up on her dreams of empire. But the Carthaginians, true to her Phoenician origins, were renowned merchants and traders, and by the middle of the century their commercial enterprises were flourishing again. This filled the Romans with a mixture of envy and dread. "Carthage must be destroyed" became the obsessive refrain of Cato the Elder, a leading senator in Rome known for his conservatism. With no provocation or reasonable justification, Rome decided to annihilate the city of Carthage; the pretext was a minor border dispute with Numidia which Rome claimed violated the peace treaty that ended the Second Punic War, though Rome had ignored Numidian violations for years. This war was an entirely one sided affair. Almost defenceless, Carthage attempted at once to sue for peace, but Rome’s vindictive terms were too harsh; to abandon her great home city and move inland. Fighting for their very survival behind strong defensive walls, Carthage endured three desperate years of siege. Even when the city was finally breached in 146 BC, it took six days of intense street fighting to force city into submission. Of a population of 400,000, perhaps 50,000 survived to be sold into slavery. Carthage itself was razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and rubble; the legend that the Romans ploughed the field with salt only appeared years later so is doubtful. North Africa (modern day Tunisia and western Libya) was added as a province to Rome's growing empire. But the obsession with Carthage would have a sting in the tail for the Romans, proving something of a psychological obstacle for potential settlers. It was only under Augustus after 30 BC that the province grew in importance to become the "breadbasket of Rome", alongside with Sicily. With overseas provinces sprouting up in Sicily, Spain, north Africa and Greece, the Roman Empire as we think of it was beginning to form into its recognisable shape. There were no great powers left to challenge Rome's dominance of the Mediterranean, but her very success prompted the internal crises that would result in the end of the Roman Republic. Category:Historical Periods